Sunday Salon: A Book Club Delimma

My book club is meeting today, and it's my turn to select the book.

I've been thinking about which book to choose for several weeks now, actually, more like several months. The last book I picked was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimimanda Ngozie Adiche which everyone loved. The one before that was Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris which got very mixed reviews. Go figure.

Lately, the books my book club has read have been a bit pedestrian: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Raven Black, The People of the Book. These are all good books, but they're not going to change anyone's life, not the way a book like Half of a Yellow Sun does. I think everyone is afraid to pick something that will upset anyone too much. I think books should upset us. I think what seperates a great book from all the rest is that it upsets the way we view the world somehow. That doesn't mean it can't also be funny, or fun. I'm not on an endless quest to be made depressed, but I'm not jonesing for something to make me comfortable numb either. I think that's what network television is for.
However, there are six other regular members of the book club who are likely to stone me with bits of quiche at the next meeting if I make them read something that pushes them over the edge.

Hence my problem.

So, I'm putting the question out there for Sunday Saloners and anyone else who happens by this morning. I'm leaving for my book club at 9:15 Pacific Time with five books in my trunk. I'm still undecided about which one to select so any suggestions are welcome be they pro or con. The five "nominees" are:

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Basically, I think everyone in the world should read this book. I've gushed on and on about it here several times. I read it for the first time just about a year ago and already want to read it again. But it's non-fiction, kind of a memoir, kind of a book on psychiatry. My book club does not have a very good record with memoir. We got severely burning by that whole Million Little Pieces business and by the Mutant Message Down Under. It was very unfortunate.

Blood Done Sign my Name by Timothy B. Tyson. Non-fiction again, about race in America. 1970. A black man is killed in public in a Southern town. No one is held accountable by the white run justice system until the black community stands up and fights back. There's a new movie based on the book coming out soon. It's won awards. Looks very good. Been on my TBR shelf for some time.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood. I remember loving this one when I read it back in grad school and I plan on re-reading it this year for the Book/Movie challenge. I've not seen the movie yet because I want to re-read the book first.

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann. I confess. I got an ARC of this book and have not read it yet. It won the National Book Award and is a best seller, something my book club might read anyway. It takes place during 1974 in New York City during the summer that saw a man walk across a tight rope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. (If you haven't seen Man on a Wire, the documentary about this, go rent it today. It's wonderful.)

Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Currently, the one I'm leaning toward choosing. I loved Symptomatic, her other novel. I was haunted by it for days after reading it. I fact, I still think about it sometimes. This one is about two mixed race sisters--one looks just like their white mother, the other just like their black father. It's one of the books the narrator of The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things was reading. I find it oddly fun to read books recommended by fictional characters in other books.

Any thoughts? Are you in a book club? What will you select when it's next your turn to choose the book?